Thursday, 25 May 2006

On Tuesday, one of Edvard Munch's woodcuts Towards The Forest (1915) was stolen from a private estate outside Horby in Sweden. And would you believe it, there isn't a copy of it on the Web! So the Police don't even know what they're looking for, except it's green with a "black person" (man dressed in black) in the foreground. According to BBC News, the Police don't even know the title of the stolen work. Strange. Art Daily does. Confusion arises because Munch carved the first woodcut in 1897, then fiddled about with it until 1915, producing many editions, some with a nude woman, others with her clothed. The illustration above is one of these variations, not the stolen work. Click the title link to visit the Munch Museum.When are insurance companies going to wake up to the value of putting images of expensive works of art on the Web, so the Police can download a copy? And of course the artwork won't be totally lost to posterity if it is never recovered. Munch's Madonna and his The Scream are still missing. At least we know they look like.

My favourite is Kong converting St Paul. I guess it appeals to the atheist in me! Scary Lisa is really, really scary. But for brilliant art scary visit http://therionweb.de/ and check out the H.R. Giger Gallery. He's the guy who designed the alien and backdrops for Alien. The image of that dead alien pilot sitting at the controls of his spacecraft still haunts me.

Why not? Art is fun. Most of my little graphics for this blog are done with XnView. (Got it yet? It's address is on my Coxsoft Art Silver Surfer Friendly Award page: just look for the Silver Surfer.)If you want to blend one photo with another or make alterations, you only need a halfway decent drawing package. Don't lash out. Visit a Freebie website (loads of them) and download a freebie or a trial of a commercial program. I'll bet my favourite in the current competition - Kong converting St Paul - was an easy graphic: bottom half classic painting, top half Kong poster, then disguise the join with a touch of hand painting.Ice Sculpture blog coming soon...